Ancient Roman music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Detail of a mosaic found in Pompeii. The figure on the left is playing the double aulos, double-reed pipes; the figure in the middle, cymbalum, small, bronze cymbals; and on the right, the tympanum, a tambourine-like drum.

Music was a major part of everyday life in Ancient Rome. Many private and public events were accompanied by music, ranging from nightly dining to military parades and maneouvres. Modern ideas of melody, scales, harmony, and instrumentation were likely unfamiliar to Ancient Romans.

[edit] General characteristics of Roman Music

We know less about the music of ancient Rome than we do about the music of ancient Greece. There are a number of at least partially extant sources on the music of the Greeks. For example, much is known about the theories of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus (some of it from Greek sources and some through the writings of later Roman authors), and there exist about 40 deciphered examples of Greek musical notation. Very little survives about the music of the Romans. There are various reasons for this, one of which is that early fathers of the Christian church were aghast at the music of theater, festivals, and pagan religion and suppressed it once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire.^[1]

The Romans are not said to have been particularly creative or original when it came to music. They did not attach any spiritual ethos to music, as did the Greeks ^[2]. Yet, if the Romans admired Greek music as much as they admired everything else about Greek culture, then it is safe to say that Roman music was mostly monophonic (that is, single melodies with no harmony) and that the melodies were based on an elaborate system of scales (called "modes"). The rhythm of vocal music may have followed the natural meter of the lyrics.^[3]

There were also other, non-Greek influences on Roman culture--from the Etruscans, for example, and, with imperial expansion, from the Middle Eastern and African sections of the empire ^[4]. Thus, there were, no doubt, elements of Roman music that were native Italian as well as non-European; the exact nature of these elements is unclear.

[edit] Musical notation

The Romans may have borrowed the Greek method^[5] of "enchiriadic notation" to record their music, if they used any notation at all. Four letters (in English notation "a", "g", "f" and "c") indicated a series of four succeeding tones with the range of a tetrachord. Rhythm signs, written above the letters, indicated the duration of each note.

In the art of the period (eg the mosaics of Pompeii), none of the musicians are shown reading music, and no written music has been discovered.

Even the well-known writings of the late Roman philosopher, Boethius,^[6] are more of a treatise on the music of the ancient Greeks rather than a description of contemporary music. The Romans might have tuned their instruments to Greek modes. Familiar, perhaps, to the modern ear would be the military calls on the trumpet-like tuba, since all instruments of that nature only have access to the same series of overtones bound by the laws of physics. ^[7]

[edit] Musical instruments

The cornu, shown with a zoomorphic bell, from Filippo Bonanni's 1723 book Gabinetto Armonico, a compendium of illustrations of musical instruments.

A wide variety of instruments are known to have been played, including: Lip reed; i.e. like a modern brass instrument

• • tuba—not the modern tuba, but a long and straight bronze trumpet with a detachable, conical mouthpiece like that of the modern French horn. Those found are about 1.3 meters long; they had a cylindrical bore from the mouthpiece to the point where the bell flares abruptly, ^[8] in a fashion similar to that of the modern, straight trumpet often seen in presentations of "period music". (It goes without saying that there were no valves. One instrument was capable only of a single overtone series.) It was essential to the military, providing "bugle calls" and was apparently borrowed from the Etruscans.
  • cornu—a somewhat more than semi-circular (shaped like an upper-case letter 'G') bronze instrument with or without a cross-bar/handle across the diameter. It had a conical bore (like a modern French horn) and a conical mouthpiece. Also used in the military and also borrowed from the Etruscans.
  • the aulos (the Greek term--in Latin, tibae), usually double, consisting of two double-reed (as in a modern oboe) pipes, not joined but generally played with a mouth-band to hold both pipes steadily between the player's lips ^[9]. Modern reconstructions indicate that they produced a low, clarinet-like sound. There is some confusion about the exact nature of the instrument; alternate descriptions indicate each pipe having a single-reed (like a modern clarinet) instead of a double reed.
  • the ascaules—a bagpipe.
  • versions of the modern flute and panpipes

[edit] Plucked string instruments

Woman playing a kithara.

• • the lyre—borrowed from the Greeks (essentially an early harp; i.e. a frame of wood or tortoise shell with various numbers of strings stretched from a cross bar to the sounding body. The lyre was held or cradled in one arm and hand and plucked with the other hand. The Romans gradually abandoned this instrument in favor of the more sophisticated kithara, a larger instrument with a box-type frame with strings stretched from the cross-bar at the top to the sounding box at the bottom; it was held upright and played with a plectrum. The strings were tuneable by adjusting wooden wedges along the cross-bar ^[10].
  • the lute The lute, the true forerunner of the guitar (kithara), is considered a medieval instrument but was played by the ancient Romans. The Roman lute had three strings and was not as popular as the lyre or the kithara, but was easier to play.
  • the kithara The Kithara was the premier musical instrument of ancient Rome and was played both in popular music and in serious forms of music. Larger and heavier than a lyre, the kithara was a loud, sweet, and piercing instrument with precision tuning ability. It was said some players could make it cry.From Kithara comes our word guitar, and though the guitar more directly evolved from the lute, the same mystique surrounds the guitar idols of today as it did for the virtuoso kithara players, the citharista, and popular singers of ancient Rome. Like other instruments, it came originally from Greece and Greek images portray the most elaborately constructed kitharas.

It was considered that the gods of music, the muses and Apollo, gave kithara players their gift to mesmerize listeners.

[edit] Organs

**The hydraulis Note the presence of the curved trumpet, the cornu.

• • The organ—There are some mosaic images of organs and fragmentary remains in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The pipes were sized so as to produce many of the modes (scales) taken over from the Greeks. From the fragments, the instruments seem to be a cross between the bagpipe and the organ. It has not been established if they were blown by the lungs or by some mechanical bellows. Of greater interest is the hydraulis, an organ that worked by water pressure. The instrument goes back to the ancient Greeks and a well-preserved model in pottery was found at Carthage in 1885. Essentially, the air to the pipes that produce the sound comes from a mechanism of a wind-chest connected by a pipe to a dome; air is pumped in to compress water, and the water rises in the dome, compressing the air, and causing a steady supply to reach the pipes. ^[11] (Also see Pipe organ#History)

[edit] Percussion

• • Variations of a hinged wooden or metal device (called a scabellum) —a "clapper"— used to beat time. Also, there were various rattles, bells, and tambourines.

• • Drums and percussion instruments like tympani and castanets, the Egyptian sistrum, and brazen pans, served various musical and other purposes in ancient Rome, including backgrounds for rhythmic dance, celebratory rites like those of the Bacchantes, military uses, hunting (to drive out prey), and even for the control of bees in apiaries. Some Roman music was distinguished for its having a steady beat, no doubt through the use of drums and the percussive effects of clapping and stamping. Egyptian musicians often kept time by snapping the fingers.

• • Sistra The sistra were rattles consisting of rings strung across the cross-bars of a metal frame, which was often used for ritual purposes.

[edit] Music in society

In spite of the purported lack of musical originality on the part of the Romans, they did enjoy music greatly and used it for many activities. Scott ^[12] recounts the obvious military uses of the tuba for signaling, as well as music for funerals, private gatherings, public performances on the stage and large gladiatorial spectacles. Music was also used in religious ceremonies. It should be noted that the Romans cultivated music as a sign of education ^[13]. Music contests were quite common and attracted a wide range of competition, including Nero, himself, who performed widely as an amateur and once traveled to Greece to compete. ^[14].

There are also numerous references (cited in Scott ^[15]) to the pervasive presence of music in ancient Rome, music even on a very large scale--hundreds of trumpeters and pipers playing together at massive games and festivals--and even of normally hand-held kitharas built as large as carriages.

[edit] References

• Bonanni, Filippo (1964). Antique Musical Instruments and their Players, Dover Publications reprint of the 1723 work, Gabinetto armonico with supplementary explanatory material. New York: Dover Pub.
• Boethius. De institutione musica. English: Fundamentals of music / Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius ; translated, with introduction and notes by Calvin M. Bower ; edited by Claude V. Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
• Grout, Donald J. and Calude V. Palisca (1996). A History of Western Music, New York: W.W. Norton.
• Pierce, John R (1983), The Science of Musical Sound, New York: Scientific American Books.
• Scott, J.E. (1957). "Roman Music" in The New Oxford History of Music, vol.1: Ancient and Oriental Music," Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Smith, William (1874). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities , New York: Harper.
• Suetonius, Nero, xli, liv.
• Ulrich, Homer and Paul Pisk (1963). A History of Music and Musical Style, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoich.
• Walter, Don C (1969) Men and Music in Western Culture, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Williams, C.F. (1903). The Story of the Organ, New York: Charles Scribner & Sons.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Grout
2. ^ Ulrich, p. 25
3. ^ Grout
4. ^ Scott, p. 404
5. ^  Bonanni, plate 2.
6. ^ Bonanni, plate 3.
7. ^ Bonanni, plate 48.
8. ^ Williams.
9. ^ Scott, p. 413
10. ^ Walter, p.23
11. ^ Suetonius, cited in Scott, p. 418.
12. ^ Scott, p. 416
13. ^  Ulrich, p. 15
14. ^ Boethius
15. ^  Pierce, p. 45

[edit] Additional bibliography

• Comotti, G. (1989). Music in Greek and Roman Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989.
• Landels, J.G. (1999). Music in Ancient Greece & Rome. London/NY: Routledge.
• S.Hagel / Ch. Harrauer (edd.), Ancient Greek Music in Performance, Vienna 2005.
• M.L.West, Ancient Greek Music, Oxford 1992.
• G.Wille, Musica Romana – die Bedeutung der Musik im Leben der Römer, Amsterdam 1967.

[edit] External links

• Musica Romana, musicarchaeology, scientific review of ancient Roman music as well as performances, bibliography and descriptions for instruments and notations online (English and German).
• The Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (TML), an evolving database of the entire corpus of Latin music theory written during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
• Synaulia, dedicated to the reconstruction of historical musical instruments, sound theatre, dance on the basis of ethnology.
• Greek origins of Roman music